Q&A: Requests for Death in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)
Requests for Death in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)
Question
Hello Rabbi, I have a question that requires broad knowledge of the Hebrew Bible, and I’d be glad if the Rabbi or one of the site’s readers could help me.
I’m looking for all the places in the Hebrew Bible where a request for death is mentioned. So far I’ve found:
1. Rebecca – “I loathe my life because of the daughters of Heth.”
2. Rachel – “Give me children, and if not, I am dead.”
3. The Jewish people – “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat.”
4. The Jewish people – “If only we had died in the land of Egypt, or if only we had died in this wilderness.”
5. Moses – “Please kill me outright, if I have found favor in Your eyes.”
6. Balaam – “Let my soul die the death of the upright, and let my end be like his.”
7. Abimelech – “Draw your sword and kill me, lest they say, ‘A woman killed him.’”
8. Samson – “Let my soul die with the Philistines.”
9. Zebah and Zalmunna – “Rise yourself and strike us down.”
10. Saul – “Draw your sword and thrust me through with it.”
11. David – “If only I had died instead of you, Absalom my son, my son.”
12. Elijah – “He came and sat under a broom tree and asked that he might die…”
13. Jeremiah – “Cursed be the day on which I was born.”
14. Jonah – “He asked that he might die and said, ‘My death is better than my life.’”
15. Jonah – “And now, Lord, please take my life from me, for my death is better than my life.”
16. Job – “Cursed be the day on which I was born.”
17. Samson – “His soul became impatient unto death.”
If anyone remembers additional places, I’d be glad to hear.
Answer
I’ll leave this to the readers. I don’t deal with the Hebrew Bible. I’ll just note that quite a few of these sources are not requests for death, but rather expressions of despair.
Discussion on Answer
If someone chooses for himself the manner of death, like the Zebah and Zalmunna example you brought, there’s also Joab son of Zeruiah: “No, for I will die here.” If death is presented as an alternative, like the Rachel example you brought, there’s also Absalom: “And if there is in me iniquity, then kill me” (and also the four lepers that the yeshiva student mentioned; the rest of his examples aren’t really correct).
Acceptance of the king’s mistaken judgment: there’s also Jonathan son of Saul, “I tasted a little honey; here I am, I shall die” (somewhat like Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah in Daniel, who gave themselves over to the fire, though they said that God would save them; and the servant of the Lord in Isaiah, “he poured out his soul unto death”).
Ecclesiastes: “So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me.”
The Job and Jeremiah passages you brought, where they cursed their birth, aren’t exactly the same as wanting to die after having lived (see Tur 420), but in Job there is also “so that my soul would choose strangling,” and Jeremiah, on the contrary, did not want to die at all; rather, he wanted his pursuers to die. [There is also “one of the sons of the prophets said to his fellow, ‘Strike me, please,’” but see there in Rabbi Joseph ibn Kaspi, that it is not a mortal blow, in keeping with what follows.]
As acceptance of death, there’s also “and if I perish, I perish” in Esther.
Thank you very much!
Does anyone have any other ideas?
A question: does anyone understand why Elijah asks to die? Because of lack of food, or some other lack?
Elijah, I think, because of the persecution against him; I haven’t looked into the commentators.
(“Then all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted, and he said, ‘For I will go down to my son mourning to Sheol’; and his father wept for him.”
Vayeshev)
Just out of curiosity, why is this of interest to you?
“And death shall be chosen rather than life by all the remnant that remains of this evil family, in all the places where I have driven them,” says the Lord of Hosts.
“Why are we sitting here? Gather yourselves, and let us enter the fortified cities, and let us perish there; for the Lord our God has doomed us and given us poisoned water to drink, because we have sinned against the Lord.”
Jeremiah 8
“Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say: ‘I have no pleasure in them.’”
Ecclesiastes 12
“If we say, ‘Let us enter the city,’ then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there; and if we sit here, we also die. So now come, let us fall to the camp of Aram; if they let us live, we shall live, and if they kill us, we shall but die.”
II Kings 7
“Then his wife said to him, ‘Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.’”
Job 2